Giuliano Di Baldassarre

Giuliano Di Baldassarre is a professor of hydrology at Uppsala University. His interdisciplinary research focuses on human-water interactions, droughts and floods. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the International Hydrology Prize, i.e. Volker Medal, by the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) in 2025, the Plinius Medal by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in 2021, and the Whiterspoon Lecture Award by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2020

Early life and education He was born in L'Aquila in 1978. Di Baldassarre studied environmental engineering with a focus on water resources at University of Bologna where he graduated summa cum laude in 2002.

Research and career Di Baldassarre joined the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft as a Senior Lecturer in 2009.

Di Baldassarre joined Uppsala University in 2014, where he today is a professor of hydrology. In the period 2016-2025, he was the director of the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Sweden., which focuses on natural hazards, social vulnerability and societal security. He was the appointed Chair of Panta Rhei: Change in Hydrology and Society during 2017–2019, a global decadal initiative of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS). Di Baldassarre is also a dedicated educator. He has mentored several postdocs and supervised numerous PhD students at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft and Uppsala University.

Awards and honors His awards and honors include:

2012 - Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2012 - Early Career Hydrologic Science Award by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2017 - Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) 2020 - Thuréus Prize by the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala 2020 - AGU's Whiterspoon Lecture 2021 - EGU's Plinius Medal 2025 - International Association of Hydrological Sciences's Volker Medal, International Hydrology Prize

Notable publications Di Baldassarre's most cited research has been on socio-hydrology, flood risk, natural hazards, and coupled human-nature systems. Here is a selection of some of his most highly cited works:

Di Baldassarre G, A Montanari (2009), Uncertainty in river discharge observations: a quantitative analysis, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 13 (6), 913–921. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-13-913-2009 Di Baldassarre G, A Viglione, G Carr, L Kuil, JL Salinas, G Blöschl (2013), Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17 (8), 3295–3303. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-3295-2013 Di Baldassarre, G., Sivapalan, M., Rusca, M., et al. (2019). Sociohydrology: Scientific challenges in addressing the sustainable development goals. Water Resources Research, 55, 6327–6355. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR023901 Di Baldassarre, G., Nohrstedt, D., Mård, J., et al. (2018). An Integrative Research Framework to Unravel the Interplay of Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities, Earth's Future, 6, 305–310. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000764 Mård, J., Di Baldassarre, G., Mazzoleni, M. (2018) Nighttime light data reveal how flood protection shapes human proximity to rivers. Science Advances, 4(8), eaar5779. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aar5779 Di Baldassarre, G., Wanders, N., AghaKouchak, A., Kuil, L., Rangecroft, S., Veldkamp, T.I.E., Garcia, M., van Oel, P.R., Breinl, K., and Van Loon A.F. (2018). Water shortages worsened by reservoir effects. Nature Sustainability, 1, 617–622. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0159-0 Di Baldassarre, G., Mazzoleni, M. & Rusca, M. (2021). The legacy of large dams in the United States. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01533-x.